by Bob Fitrakis, Oct 29, 1998

Let's see. Before the Republicans voted to put Bill Clinton's much-investigated organ under an impeachment microscope, nationally 49% of U.S. citizens were planning to vote for the Grand Old Party and only 41% for the laggard Dems. After the articles of impeachment, the Dems picked up a quick 6 points, telling us what we already knew intuitively: that Ken Starr looks a lot like Big Brother and U.S. citizens are becoming more and more worried about privacy in this high-tech age.

All of us leads to the question of "morality." The Dispatch, ever dutiful in its Dem-bashing, would publish letters wherein Central Ohio yay-hoos waxed philosophic about "the good ol' days" of morality under Bush and Reagan. Indeed. Such letters spoke volumes about the writer's I.Q., or their own concept of right and wrong. Let's go back to those yesteryears -- the hell-black night known as the Reagan-Bush era -- and take a gander at what these moral stalwarts did for our nation. It wouldn't be fair to use any "liberal" or left sources, so let's start with the long-anticipated second volume of the CIA's report released October 8 on Nicaraguan Contra cocaine trafficking.

The report by the CIA Inspector General -- remember the CIA bragged after Senator Frank Church's investigation in the 70's, which was quite damning, that Congress was treated like mushrooms "kept in the dark and shoveled shit on occasionally -- notorious for white-washing, is entitled "Allegations of Connections between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine-Trafficking to the United States, Volume II." Remember I.F. Stone's famous dictum: everything that you need to know is in the public record somewhere.

Recall the specter of the Ghost of Reagan Past attacking the Nicaraguan Sandinista government for having the good sense to throw the greedy dictator Somoza out of the country. Our most moral man, Ronald Wilson Reagan, came on TV and told us that the Contras were the equivalent of our own "founding fathers," an admission closer to the truth than the Prez will ever realize. We know from the CIA's own whitewashed report that the 15th of September Legion, the military arm of the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ADREN), was the first of the Contra organizations funded by Enrique Bermudez.

ADREN merged into the Nicaraguan Democratic Front (FDN) in September 1981, financed by the CIA. At the time of the merger, CIA documents record that ADREN had already "decided to engage in drug trafficking to the United States to raise funds for its activities." After all, Washington and Jefferson were hemp farmers, so there's sort of a parallel. The September Legion later left the Alliance, and CIA field reports tell us that they financed their independent operation by not only drug trafficking into the United States but supplementing it with kidnapping, extortion and robbery.

The FDN remained the principle Contra organization operating on the "northern front" out of bases in Honduras. The CIA Inspector General reports that the CIA had information and/or allegations that nine FDN Contra leaders were linked to drug trafficking. But hey, what's a little blow among patriots?

Meanwhile, in El Salvador, the Ilopango Air Base which I once had the privilege of visiting the front gate, served as a major supply center for Reagan's CIA Contra project. The Inspector General's report refers to the Spook Project as the "private benefactor program" run by that great American hero Ollie North. I once had the pleasure of heckling Oliver North on Free Enterprise Day in Marion, Ohio. The news item was even covered in the Dispatch, albeit the obituary section. Later, when I asked him where the really good coke was when he was signing books at Borders, the line of Ohioans extending out the door waiting for his autograph, seemed somewhat shocked.

Of course the CIA now admits that their former boss, President George Bush, that paragon of virtue, was involved in the North operation despite his lies under oath that he was "out of the loop." Bush's main man, Felix Rodriguez, aka Max Gomez, a well-known punk who stole Che Guevara's watch after he was killed by the infamous CIA Shooter Team, was helping North run an arms and drug bazaar using Hangars 4 and 5 at the Ilopango Air Base.

Columbus' own Richard Secord supplied air logistics for North. The CIA now reveals that 14 pilots in the Contra re-supply network weren't only bringing guns to the Contra thugs, but were -- oh, shocking! -- flying drugs into the United States for the Columbians. All of this was sanctioned under Executive Order 12333 which essentially privatized covert operations permitting the National Security Council staff to run the secret operation out of the White House basement after the CIA was later forbidden by the Boland Amendment to assist the Contras.

There was a Memorandum of Understanding between Attorney General William French Smith and the Director of Central Intelligence which released the CIA from any obligation to report narcotics violations to other U.S. government agencies like the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Reagan, probably too busy praying to remember any of this, while under oath said he could not recall any details of the North-Contra affair 144 times. One of Bush's last acts was to grant pardons to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and a whole slew of underlings who could've testified against him in a criminal trial planned by Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh that would have linked Bush to Contra drug trafficking.

I suppose that's why Reagan and Bush are moral men and Bill Clinton is so evil and deserves impeachment. With them, the white stuff on Monica's dress wouldn't have been semen.